Chapter 7: Hungary

(continued)

MAPPING AND EVALUATION OF OPPORTUNITIES

International Decisionmaking

Preparation and Approval of National Laws and Regulations

Preparation and Approval of National Policies, Strategies, Programs and Plans

The National Environmental Council is the new and exceptional possibility through which the public can have an indirect say in the most important environmental policy and similar issues.

Act XI (1987) on legislation mirrors the view of the Hungarian law science that the tools of regulating the society other than legislative actions (Acts of Parliament, Governmental and Ministerial Decrees) are not transparent enough and such should be gradually eliminated from our governmental system. Life in the 1990s however brought such situations where the government must use these non-legislative tools, too. Owing to the hostile legal surroundings, this kind of regulation tool has little or no legal background in Hungary.

Preparation and Approval of Local Rules, Regulations, and of Regional/ Local Policies (Strategies), Territorial Plans (Spatial/Local Land-Use Plans) and Siting

The legal tool of referendum works well on local level. Even so, the cases decided or partly decided (initiated, drafted) represent just a few percent of the total sum of decisions.

Even if the public referendum decided a local case, the execution of the decision rests entirely upon the authorities. Public notification of the decisions on the other hand takes place in almost all cases, notwithstanding the person of the initiator. As concerns post-decision monitoring, the public may have important input in quite a number of cases.

EIA

With regard to assessment, since 1995 the new EIA Governmental Decree allows a certain grade of public participation. In practice the public uses this possibility in less than 10 percent of the cases, but in international comparison this rate seems to be not the lowest, that's why we gave a rating of three for this item. An active notification takes place in all of the cases.

Evaluation of the alternatives takes place in 95 percent of the cases also in the assessment phase, because in the Hungarian EIA system there is a quite thorough assessment system, which allows the final decision right after it.

Although the inspectorate is required to answer in the decision all the points which were raised by the public during assessment and the public hearing, this responsibility is sometimes neglected by it. The notification of the clients and of all the persons who made comments is perfectly fulfilled in practice, and naturally all those who are interested are able to see the copies of the decision.

Execution is 100 percent on the inspectorate.

Some feedback from the public is naturally possible and welcome, but practice shows that it very seldom happens even in such cases where otherwise strong public participation took place in earlier phases.

Permitting

Principally, environmental NGOs could be a client in these cases, according to Article 98 (Paragraph 1) of Kvtv, but this very seldom happens. Once an NGO uses this legal entitlement and participates as a client, its comments should be taken seriously and responded to in the final decision. The same is true in connection with monitoring. As concerns the passive rights to information, environmental inspectorates mostly fulfill their responsibilities well.

Management of Environmental Funds

Out of the specialities of these kind of decisionmaking, there is no scoping phase here.

Since the green organizations are represented in the decisionmaking boards, in principle they are part of the decisionmaking process. However, their influence is still low on the merit of the decision. Passive publicity of this kind of decision is good.

This kind of decision needs only a book-keeping motion as execution.

There is some evaluation process of the efficiency of the funds, but is is underdisciplined and not always satisfactorily available for the public.